Erkjenner svikt: «Det beklages på det sterkeste»

On 10th December 2025, a Norse flight from Oslo to Bangkok was scheduled to depart at 07:55. However, it did not leave the gate until 17:59, twelve hours later. This lengthy delay triggers compensation rights. Yet, when three customers submitted their claims to the airline, they received no response. They then turned to Transport Complaints Court.

It was agreed in April that the three passengers were entitled to a total of 20,258 kroner. It took nearly three months for Norse to pay the compensation. Only after the Civil Aviation Authority contacted the airline did the payment arrive. Norse had breached its own rule, which promises compensation within 45 days of processing a claim.

At the beginning of the month, Norse had 625 resolved claims awaiting payment. Around 100 of these have also been in Transport Complaints Court or the Public Complaints Council. Among the 625 cases, 105 had been pending for two to three months, and 65 had been over 90 days. Norse acknowledges this is not acceptable. "A significant number of claims have not been paid within the deadlines we have communicated to passengers.

We take this very seriously," they write to the Civil Aviation Authority. Norse's responses come in the wake of an ongoing case brought by the Civil Aviation Authority against the Norwegian long-haul airline. The Authority is considering imposing an economic penalty on the airline for failing to respect passengers' rights in relation to delays or cancellations, as E24 reported earlier this summer.

The Authority has this impression after receiving numerous customer inquiries who were simply unable to receive their Norwegian tickets. Responses have gone unheard because Norse has struggled with capacity. Last year, the number of Norse passengers affected by major delays more than tripled to over 40,000. This led to a customer pressure that the company could not overcome.

In the summer, the company had around 17,000 unresolved claims lying around. To be dimensioned for the increased influx, Norse has been undergoing a "significant staffing" in the departments dealing with compensation, refunds, and general customer service. This has given the company's operations a boost, but still, there is a bottleneck.

The shoe now presses in the finance department, where approved claims are laid out for payment, according to Norse. "The capacity to process payments has not been increased in line with the growth in the number of cases," the company writes to the Civil Aviation Authority. They believe this alone is the reason why payments are delayed and that the company "in no way undermines or systematically" violates EU regulations.

"But we acknowledge and deeply regret that the company has a backlog of payments that it now prioritizes highest," Norse writes. The company has also started to ramp up the finance department. - Cases from Transport Complaints Court and the Public Complaints Council have been given special priority, and we have introduced weekly reporting and escalation to leadership when payment deadlines are missed, writes Commercial Director Frans Leenaars in an email to E24.

So far this year, Norse has processed and paid claims totaling over 50 million kroner. They write to the Authority that all cases that have already exceeded the 45-day deadline will be paid by October 30th. The airline hopes that the responses will be enough to avoid the Civil Aviation Authority issuing fines. They have previously argued that this would weaken their ability to invest in customer service, and thus harm their own purpose.